Imagine my surprise when I came home from work today and discovered an entire bag of someone’s household trash in my driveway!  It could have been an honest mistake and the person who lost it may not have known it, but traveling along other roads in the county, I have seen the similar problem.  It seems to be more prevalent in the areas closer to the trash collection stations (though my house is a couple of miles away).  People just need to pay more attention as they are driving along.

I do have to commend VDOT for having the work release prisoners along Grayson Turnpike about a month of so ago picking up trash.

You would wonder, that the folks, that haul their trash to the “convenance station” would notice, the bag, on their way BACK home?

And would do the right thing, especially since their could be personally identifiable information in the bag..

You could take a cursory glance at the bag, and see if a bill or something is handy, and give the folks a telephone call.

It’s really bad along 4th St. We’ve seen whole bags many times and I agree that you would think people would see them on the way home.

Does anyone enforce litter laws around here?  I’d love to know how many citations have been written in all of Wythe County for littering offenses.  It shouldn’t be hard to trace whole bags back.

I’m sure that bag was an accident.  However, compared to other places I’ve lived and traveled through, littering is much more prevalent here.  A trip down any of the county’s back roads will prove my point.

A number of years ago my brother and I did an overnighter on the Appalachian Trail.  For those unfamiliar with this trail, it is quite amazing, and we’re fortunate that it runs so close to our county (it travels through Bland county).  The trail is the longest in the United States at 2,175 miles, and travels from Maine to Georgia.

We entered the trail from a point where it crosses a back road in Bland Country, and were dismayed to see litter everywhere along the trail.  It was really bad for hundreds of yards - and I mean bad.  We speculated that hunters had discarded their empty bottles, snack wrappers, tobacco containers and spent shotgun shells as they hunted.  Several miles later we reached the shelter where we were going to sleep, and met up with a few through-hikers.  These are people hiking the entire length of the trail, and all of them had started at Maine and had already walked more than 1,500 miles over the course of several weeks to reach that point.  Each of them said the last few miles of the trail had been the worst looking and most littered of the entire trail to that point - we’re talking over a thousand miles of trail, and the most littered, disrespected part was in Bland county where the trail crossed a back road and locals would park and hike in.

Dan